Roche’s Avastin chalked up another miss in a study, this time failing to meet its main target of prolonging the lives of patients with late-stage stomach cancer in combination with chemotherapy.
Last April, Roche said Avastin didn’t meet its main goal in another study of preventing colon cancer from returning in patients in the early stages of the disease after surgical removal of the cancer. That was just after Roche agreed to pay $46.8 billion for the shares that it already didn’t own of Genentech, the biotech that developed Avastin.
In the stomach-cancer trial, Roche said the drug didn’t extend overall survival in patients treated with the drug in combination with chemotherapy when compared with the same chemotherapy treatment plus a placebo. But the drug maker added that no new safety issues were raised in the trial and that work on Avastin would continue.
Avastin is already approved to treat advanced colorectal, breast, lung and kidney cancer. Here’s more from Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters.
Photo: Bloomberg News